Ned > Ned's Quotes

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
― Frederic Bastiat

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”
― Frederick Bastiat

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.”
― John Taylor Gatto

“are much more beautiful in body than women. It is only a man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts, have they really and truly any sense of susceptibility; it is a mere mockery if they make a pretense of it in order to assist their endeavor to please... They are incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything... The most distinguished intellects among the whole sex have never managed to produce a single achievement in the fine arts that is really genuine and original; or given to the world any work of permanent value in any sphere.[711] This veneration of women is a product of Christianity and of German sentimentality; and it is in turn a cause of that Romantic movement which exalts feeling, instinct and will above the intellect.[712] The Asiatics know better, and frankly recognize the inferiority of woman. "When the laws gave women equal rights with men, they ought also to have endowed them with masculine intellects.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“She remembers that American airplanes had dropped handbills a few days before the bombing warning Hiroshima residents to evacuate because “something terrible” was going to happen to the city. But, she says, the population was forbidden by law from reading the handbills, which were scooped up by the authorities.”
― Max McCoy, Zero Minutes to Midnight

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”
― Charlton Heston

“It is better to repent a sin than regret the loss of a pleasure.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“Gradually, the unthinkable becomes tolerable, then acceptable, then legal, then praised.”
― Joni Eareckson Tada

“And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin”
― Bob Dylan